As a writer, an artist, and purveyor of creative coaching, I have come to rely on an exquisitely simple tool for triggering creativity and intuition. It's convenient, free, and more dependable than I imagined it would be when I actively started using it many years ago. The catch is it requires patience and trust, and those qualities are on the endangered list.
The tool is this: The simple asking of small, conscious, constructive questions without expecting immediate answers.
Expect answers and expect more than one, but not immediately.
I've been using this method of fertile inquiry for so long that the answers seem dependable in their arrival. I ask a question before sleeping at night and get clarity in the morning when I am still halfway in the dream world - the imaginative delivery system of the subconscious where anything is possible - but as I begin to feel the first conscious clues of awakening, before all my insecurities and habitual patterns of thought get a chance to fog my good knowing. I have been known to doubt an early morning answer as my neuroses kicks in and protests, but more often than not I go back to the answer dawn delivered.
Questions about creative directions usually take more time to incubate and arrive in flurries, lightning flashes, and once ... on a billboard.
The mind LOVES questions, they trigger the complex detonation of possibilities.
A question can simmer, incubate, and ricochet off my vast inner world of collected experience. Not using the most obvious answer is a trick many people fail to use because they too easily fall in love with any idea or answer before they take it deeper by staying open to more answers, finding the answer behind the answer so the idea and the answer results in more depth and confidence.
You can ask questions anywhere (brace yourself for a silly poem):
Here are some questions you might consider test driving but remember: patience and trust.
1. How can I make it easier to show-up to my passions?
2. How do I want to feel in the creative process? Playfully curious? Mischievously quirky? Anticipating discovery? Boldly sure?
3. What is one small way I can make my writing/art/music/life fresh?
4. What's one small thing I can do right now, really quickly, just to move into a little more momentum?
5. Where will my next inspiration come from?
6. Why would I want to go to a party when I can stay home and be creative?
Okay, that last one snuck in there, I suppose as an answer to "What additional quirky question can I add to break up the seriousness of these questions?" That's how they work.
I find that concentrating on one question at a time works best.
Asking small questions is one of the tools Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaches learn during their training. If you're interested in knowing more about that,
here's where you would go.
“
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” ― Socrates
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